


Entropy

by thanatosx49



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Introspection, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1491322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thanatosx49/pseuds/thanatosx49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moment after moment, hour by hour, it all leads to this...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I have insomnia and have been listening to music to try to fall asleep. Anyhoo, don't blame T.S Elliot, Gary Jules, or the BBC, this one's my fault.

  
It's there, biding its time and steadily growing, creeping onward, unstoppable. Whether it's on a crowded strip of pavement with undiscerning throngs passing by or in a private moment, it's there. It's in the familiar faces and equally familiar rows of shops, news agents, and cafés. It's there in the darkest hours of the night, when sleep is a distant shore yearned for but never reached. It's all around him; from the tower block whose bricks and mortar already contain faults that will lend themselves to its eventual demise in demolition, to the first pangs of birth that will eventually end such a brief mortal existence.

Entropy, that's what it is: that gradual unravelling of flesh and blood, atom from atom, progressing back to dust. Done and dusted, ashes to ashes — fear in a handful of dust.

But for all that terminal fragility that surrounds him there's life, an enduring sense of Time's passage, and he can feel that now, too. No longer merely the impassive observer, he, too, is caught in that race to that final end. Wrapped up in a bundle of decaying molecules, seething chemical reactions and such vaporous dreams as they are, entropy is written and etched within the fabric of his own being. Entropy is inexorably pulling at the warp and weft, the previous state of abiding inertia just a fading memory left to ghost itself across the remnants of dreams.

 _Everything dies_.

What makes it bearable, keeps him from straining at the paltry limitations of muscle and bone, shape and form, are tiny trivial things. Trivial things that mean so much in this tumultuous existence: the light in someone's eye as they look upon a loved one; the laughter of small children, carefree and innocent as they take things for what they are, without forcing anything into preconceived ideologies; being welcomed back after a wander and having somewhere to _belong._ It's all so important when time's easing by at a tangible and steady rate, when the experiences and echoes of centuries lived are just that: echoes. Echoes that will someday ebb and fade to nought, like ripples in water graduating to indiscernible fluctuations.

 _Life is, life is..._  
very short.

Sometimes he wakes in a cold sweat, not sure if hearth and home, comfort and effortless acceptance are mere dreams; can't remember for a fleeting instant if it's simply the delusions of a strung-out, worn out wanderer in the fourth dimension. _But no, it's here, it's now — it's always come down to this, like destiny, fate, a reward._ Then it all comes flooding back, the awareness, the recollections, the assurances and affirmations: it's not a dream, it's _real._ But if it _was_ just a passing fancy, a dream quickly fading away in the cold light of dawn, it's the best he's ever had.

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=54470>


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